The Supreme Court on Friday issued a notice to the Election Commission of India (ECI) on a public interest litigation (PIL) seeking repoll in seats where majority of votes polled are none of the above (NOTA).

A bench headed by chief justice of India (CJI) Dhananjaya Y Chandrachud said, “This is about the electoral process also. Let us see what the Election Commission has to say.”

The bench, also comprising justices JB Pardiwala and Manoj Misra sought the response of EC without specifying any date for taking up the matter.

The order was passed in a PIL filed by motivational speaker and author Shiv Khera.

Senior advocate Gopal Sankaranarayan appearing for Khera said that the matter raises an important issue and required consideration giving the recent example of Surat Parliamentary seat where the BJP candidate was the sole candidate in the fray who got elected unopposed.

“In Surat, we saw there was no other candidate. All votes would have gone to one candidate,” Sankaranarayan said.

The petition sought an order from the court to the EC to declare NOTA as a “fictional electoral candidate” and for guidelines to be framed that in case where maximum votes are polled for NOTA, the election is declared null and void and fresh elections are held for the respective constituency.

NOTA was introduced into the election process at all levels – Parliament, assemblies and local bodies, in the year 2013.

The petitioner had since approached the poll panel twice to make NOTA as a “fictional candidate” at the national level.

The petition filed by advocate Shweta Mazumdar pointed out that this decision has been taken by the state poll panels of Maharashtra and Haryana and the union territories of Delhi and Puducherry making NOTA a fictional candidate in the local body polls.

The rules framed in these four states/UT said, “If in any election, all the contesting candidates individually receive lesser votes than the ‘fictional electoral candidate’ (NOTA), then none of the contesting candidates will be declared as elected and there will be mandatory repoll.

The petition asked EC to frame rules in such a way that if NOTA gets a majority, the election held in that constituency is declared null and void and a fresh election to the constituency is held.

Further, Khera demanded EC to give sufficient publicity of NOTA as a fictional candidate.

It also sought rules to be framed that the candidates who receive fewer votes than NOTA shall stand debarred from contesting all elections for a period of five years.

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